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I have been thinking whether there is not some direct _inverse_ correlation between how easy it is to differentiate skillful interaction with reality and the emphasis on form like degrees, dress code, speech code, and other form of behavioral codes. I think it can be fairly stated that the more difficult it is to tell whether one makes any kind of unequivocal difference, the greater the role of politics, behavioral codes, fuzzy euphemistic phrasings, and political correctness.

It is interesting, because one of the reason I became a [hard] scientist was the desire to deal with reality which paralleled the equally strong desire not to deal with politics which I use as an umbrella term for any kind of maneuvering where the important part is no longer what you know but who you know.

Now, it is possible to get close to this level of reality in science. At some level you either have an answer to the scientific question or you don’t and no amount of fancy layout or selling can change this essential fact. Opinions don’t matter. Only facts do. However, a scientific career includes an additional layer: Is your question important (another word for popular, it turns out)? Does it warrant funding? And so on.

Having read “Shop class as Soul craft”, I also realize that you find the same closeness with reality when it comes to mechanical repair. It is actually closer, I would say. When I used to explain my work, I would always have to explain, first, what a proton was and sometimes that the earth revolved around the sun and that the sun was a star and so on. Before you knew it, it all became very abstract. A bike brake is different. It doesn’t take any kind of basic scientific understanding to see whether the bike brakes or not.

I think sailing is similar and I think this is why both of these are so attractive to me. It is the ultimate and merciless test against reality. Unlike social-social interactions, reality has no off-button. If the boat is in the process of capsizing, you can not call up a few “friends” and negotiate a bail out. I can curse the damn sea as you get hit by waves, but conversely, you can not put up a nude calendar in your cubicle lest you get sued due to social-social constructs. If you sail well, it is obvious, and you do not need degrees to prove so. Conversely, you can in principle do groundbreaking research without any degrees, but I seriously challenge you to get it funded or even published without the PhD “union card” and institutional backing.

With manufacturing largely gone, the social-social world now dominates. There is a tremendous amount of programming both from the few powers that be and from a larger fraction that simply repeat the predominant mantra and arrogantly presenting it as the ultimate course of action. I don’t think it was ever proper for me and so I spent three decades of my life and I will probably spend three more or at least until I sail into the sunset being hammered by well-meaning declarations about the importance of getting all the right degrees from the right institutions and pursuing the right awards and the right people… that we should all have the right obsessions, namely, a career in whatever field pays the most, and the right priorities, namely, a big house, a big car, lots of stuff, and the right goals, which, unless you’re one of the rare individuals (more power to you) who enjoy all your work for its own sake (I enjoyed part of my work for its own sake), generally involve plastic plaques, 5% raises, or offices with windows or situated in corners(*).

(*) Can anyone explain to me why a corner office is inherently better than a “wall-office”? Is it because offices are generally deeper than they are wide and so corner-offices being”deep by deep” are bigger?

Verily, listening to the propaganda, generally sold as advice—often by well-meaning people, even, that is going to send the next generation into life-long mortgages and likely enforced passions that have more to do with career-advancement and remuneration than doing something valuable for themselves and which at the same time comes with a bunch of xanax treated side-effects, drives me nuts.

I guess maybe some day, hopefully soon, I can make the transition to burning my soapbox and just doing my thing being content without giving advice on how to change the world (exactly what I don’t like about the ‘opposition’ 😉 ). But while I still do, I want to wake people up to fact that there is an alternative to the mainstream life-advice of careerism and consumerism. You do not have to choose A/C, beta-blockers, 401ks, astroparched resume paper, and your comparative advantage. You can choose fresh air and a self-sufficient craft instead—if you want to.

17 users responded in " Back to reality "

I guess a corner office is better because it has windows on two walls, thereby giving the illusion of getting more access to “life”.

tlblack said,

Love this post! I’ve been ranting on this topic lately too.

As I’m not quite financially able to ‘permanently retire.’ I’m looking simply to cut my expenses so drastically that I can afford to do any kind of work I want — I’ve achieved that. Now I have to pick a new job field. Well, ok, I don’t HAVE to. But I worked in education before. It feels great when you see the actual product of your work: RELEVANT and VALUABLE learning in students. But too often there is interference. Either you are prevented from doing what you need to do teach (by funding, stupid, stupid hoops to jump through or just the flaws in society) or you are forced to teach things that are either irrelevant or harmful. Or worse, you are put in the position of saying only 20% can get an A and, therefore acting as some kind of a sorting system for 4-year colleges. I’ve had students under so much stress that they are already medicated, suffering from nervous breakdowns and panic attacks. I just can’t keep going in that system–no matter how much I love actually teaching someone something useful.

So, I’ve considered skilled trades, plumbing seems interesting (I just took apart the pipes in my kitchen sink and LOVED it.) Also, I’ve considered cooking, housework and care for the home-bound elderly or perhaps agriculture. I do love sticking my hands in the dirt and watching plants grow. Whenever I mention this people look shocked and horrified. What if I come in contact with feces? That is their first concern. All of the fields I’m interested seem to involve doing something with my hands and seeing a concrete result and the immediate response is–oh, you’ll get dirty or oh, but you’re overqualified.

I’m certainly getting dirty when I contribute to the very sick system of pressuring children into thinking they need to succeed and attend THE 4-year college and pumping them full of meds if they don’t. I’d rather handle actual feces in real life. I mean, I can think of more pleasant things than say shoveling manure for fertilizer, but really, it’s not that bad–been there, done that. I can live with it.

Anyway, now I’m ranting again. But I really enjoyed this post. Reading through this blog helps me keep my head straight in a world where very few people think like me. I’m used to just not saying what I think or just accepting the fact that people are going to look at me funny. I try not to take that personally or let it dissuade me.

It reminds me of this scene I have in my mind from my travels. I was walking through a village in an African country with a large backpack (and I probably looked a little dirty and scary and white) and I crossed this small boy squatting on top of a trash heap in the middle of town and taking a dump. I thought that was an unusual sight, but he tapped his friend (who was squatting next to him) on the shoulder and they started cracking up at me–apparently I was stranger than he was in that context. So I guess weird is just a question of habit. I try to remember that.

Concojones said,

– Managers want the office with the most windows (implying more surface area and thus an important manager). And corner offices have lots of windows.

Corner office: what I said above is no more than my personal impression. At my previous job I had to divide a floor into offices for the management team and get everyone’s consent. Turns out they mostly cared about the number of windows, and some pointed out that the corner office had more windows. (This is Europe btw.)

kate said,

Jacob, I studied philosophy, just as you studied hard sciences, to learn about reality. No doubt my choice was influenced by having two of three older siblings with bad luck and brain injuries.

Do what matters to you.

Maybe it’s hard to figure out?

I retired early too, and I swear it’s harder than working, some days.

Debbie M said,

Um, 5% raises? I wish. I admit I have gotten a couple, but the standard where I work is 3% (except this year when it’s 0%).

Corner offices are rare (only four per floor) and therefore easy to tie to status. It’s all about status. I have a cube with a window with a beautiful view and a hyperactive air conditioning vent. I practically begged to move to an interior cube that wasn’t so cold, but that would have made me and my boss look bad. Some kind of politics thing. Finally I quit banging my head against the wall and got fingerless gloves, put an sweater in my file cabinet, and learned to take walking breaks to thaw out.

tlblack, have you thought about tutoring? Or offering classes in “difficult” subjects (math! science! fine arts!) for students being home schooled?

Jacob said,

I really like teaching but it absolutely has to be in a field where students don’t need to attend. I think martial arts fit the bill. I’m concerned about tutoring being done either to make sure that the student gets all A’s or the student doesn’t fail the class. I don’t think there are many opportunities to teach students that just care about the subject and want to know more regardless of what the grade is. Maybe in adult/senior education?

George said,

Corner office has twice as many opportunity for windows as any other. And it has < 1/2 the noisy neighbors as an interior office.

"I want to wake people up to fact that there is an alternative to the mainstream life-advice of careerism and consumerism."

And you're doing admirably well with that, by being an example.

gpjones said,

Dear Jacob,

Love this post.

Steven said,

Jacob,

At one point you were being all mysterious about your job so as to keep your identity secret. Now that you are no longer working (or being anonymous), can you actually describe for us what it is that you did in your ‘former life’?

PS: I know what a proton is:)

Jacob said,

@Steven – I worked as a post-doc doing astrophysics. This mainly involved writing research-grade (think custom-built and user-unfriendly) fluid+reaction dynamics codes and comparing the output with satellite observations.

While I understand the disdain for this status quo set of expectations, you have also admit that just because something falls into that set doesn’t mean it’s not desirable or fun or interesting. A new j/105 costs somewhere around $150,000. It’s as much a status symbol for most people as it is a race boat. Sure *you* don’t need to buy one to sail on it, but you have to condone it’s purchase if you’re going racing on someone else’s boat.

What are your thoughts on that? Does a big house, big car, big boat, or lots of stuff count differently if you’re attracted to it for it’s own sake rather than because society says it’s attractive? Is it even possible to objectively determine why you might be attracted to one of these things?

I’m really not sure what you’re trying to convey with the word “reality” in this post. It seems to mean something like “lack of social construct”, but I find it a bit unclear. If that is your intention, then yes — the conflicts of man vs. sea or man vs. bicycle clearly lie outside that realm and are therefore more “real”, but I don’t know what that buys you. If you’re unhappy with the society in which you live, you can try to change it, which will involve a *lot* of politics, or you can avoid it, which is easily done on a 35ft sailboat.

I’m not sure that, for people whom are satisfied with the status quo, trying to change or avoid society’s expectations is even going to be beneficial. Certainly this doesn’t apply to a lot of people, yourself included, but many people are perfectly happy to pursue their fancy car and 5 bedroom house.

Jacob said,

@Tyler – I think being attracted to something (or someone) for your own sake rather than for society’s completely changes the picture. For instance, I have spent an insane amount of money on capital assets, relatively speaking. People talk about a 25% savings rate being oversaving. I saved three times as much as that because control of my time was just that much of a priority to me. For some it really may be that 5th bedroom in their home. However, I am afraid that a lot of people think they are attracted to society’s values simply because they do not know what they want for themselves so they just accept the default. It is this that is my main source of disdain, not so much the choice itself (although it does bother me on an environmental level) but the lack of choice. Are there any free men left? Perhaps it is arrogant of me to presume this, but I think this only holds insofar that I guess the fraction wrong; I really think it holds for many people. How else are we going to explain prozac, etc.?

To answer the other question: Reality is just my thing, that is, there is a certain personality type that is attracted to self-sufficiency and independence. That is where I’m heading [back]. Those who are attracted to social games may decide to stay in the race because that is what [making a] living has come to be about. I think this is to a large extent because “reality” has been outsourced to China (all the manufacturing jobs).

tlblack said,

Debbie–the homeschooling supplement would be perfect for me (I used to teach swimming to kids largely in the homeschooling population–yes, random, but very motivating because I was teaching a real life skill and most people wanted or needed to learn). But the country I live in does not allow homeschooling.

Jacob, yeah, you have to avoid those tutoring for the ‘A’ kids. As for the ones who don’t want to me there–I’m actually ok with that if it’s helping someone who is reluctant to learn a relevant skill (reading, writing–something major) how to face the task of learning it. Sometimes people are just freaking out about some weird psychological aspect of learning (swimming is a great example!) and if you can help them with that, you can teach them even though they are reluctant to learn and may not want to be there. It’s very challenging and rewarding work!

Anyway, thanks to both of you. Your comments have my mind working on promising new angles.

As for the Tyler-Jacob discussion as to whether buying something expensive is allowed, I see no reason why not. The purchase of even an expensive sailboat makes sense to me: it’s a means of locomotion that does not use fuel (or just as a backup) and it is also a dwelling! I mean, you have to live somewhere and you usually have to pay in some way to do that. If I understand correctly, Jacob, you own an RV and rent a space to put it–you could easily switch for owning a boat instead of keeping your capital in the RV and paying rent on your site. . .

Kevin M said,

Spend money on what I value (and according to my values), not what society tells me to value or advertises to me, that’s how I do it. I have a bigger than average house, but drive a 12 year old car – I don’t value the “status” of a shiny new car, I value a nice house in a good neighborhood for my family.

Maus said,

Now this is the Jacob I love to read. Your “manifesto” of self-sufficiency and de-coupling from the “social-social” oligarchy is what resonates in me.

Re: corner office. All business is a heirarchy, even the ones with so-called teams and “flat management architecture.” If my office is bigger or has more amenitities than yours, it shows that I am higher on the pyramid in a way that titles cannot convey. Indeed, my own title expresses almost nothing of my work responsibilities. It is all so tedious and unnecessary; but until they make me CEO, I cannot change the culture. And they’re not going to make ME the CEO because I’d have everybody wearing jeans and tending vegetable gardens on the break.

The only thing I’d add (which you’ve already alluded to) is that there’s a layer of politics in science, too, unfortunately. This is not part of science’s reputation as ideal arbiter of reality, but it’s there and it’s big (eg., who gets funding, lab teams, what questions are allowed etc.).

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